CNBC 2015 GOP primary debate: on Corporations

Bobby Jindal:
Get rid of both corporate tax and corporate welfare

Q: Cutting corporate taxes is very popular in your party because our rate, at 35%, is one of the highest in the world. But nobody has figured out how to identify a set of
loopholes that would allow that tax rate to be lowered. So can you tell us specifically what loopholes you'd do away with?

JINDAL: I'd get rid of the corporate tax. We do have the highest corporate tax rate in the developed world. I'd get rid of it. I'd get rid of all the corporate welfare.
Make the CEOs pay their same tax rates the way the rest of us do. Get rid of the corporate tax, bring those jobs and investment here to the United States, stop sending jobs and investment overseas.

Carly Fiorina:
Crony capitalism is alive and well, and leads to socialism

Crony capitalism is alive and well, and has been so in Washington DC for decades. Crony capitalism is what happens when government gets so big and so powerful that only the big and the powerful can handle it.

Why are the pharmaceutical companies
consolidating? Why are there 5 even bigger Wall Street banks now instead of the 10 we used to have? Because when government gets big and powerful, the big feel like they need to get even bigger to deal with all that power. And meanwhile, the small & the
powerless go out of business.

This is how socialism starts. Government causes a problem and then government steps in to solve the problem. This is why, fundamentally, we have to take our government back.

And, meanwhile, small businesses are getting
crushed. Big government favors the big, the powerful, and the well-connected and crushes the small and the powerless. It's why we have to reduce the size and power of government--to level the playing field between big and powerful and small and powerless

Carly Fiorina:
At HP, I made tough calls in tough times

I was recruited to HP to save a company. It was a company that had grown into a bloated bureaucracy that cost too much and delivered too little to customers and shareholders. As an outsider, I tackled HP's entrenched problems head-on,
I cut the bureaucracy down to size, reintroduced accountability, focused on service, on innovation, on leading in every market and every product segment. It was a difficult time. However, we saved 80,000 jobs. We went on to grow to 160,000 jobs.
I had to make tough calls in tough times. I think people are looking for that in Washington. I was fired over a disagreement in the boardroom. One of the things that people don't understand is how accountable a CEO is. I had to report results every 90 da

George Pataki:
Wall Street and Washington too close

Q: Has Wall Street gone too far?

A: I think they have gone too far. I think we've seen Wall Street really blossom and do very well
while the rest of the country is struggling, and it's because we have this corrupt connection between Wall Street and Washington.

Jeb Bush:
We need to lower rates for small business AND big business

My plan gives the middle class the greatest break: $2,000 per family. And if you make $40,000 a year, a family of four, you don't pay any income tax at all. Simplifying the code and lowering rates, both for corporations and personal rates,
is exactly what we need to do. You think about the regulatory cost and the tax cost--that's why small businesses are closing, rather than being formed in our country right now. The big corporations have the scale to deal with all of this.

John Kasich:
Worked for Lehman Brothers before the Great Recession

TRUMP [to KASICH]: This was the man that was a managing general partner at Lehman Brothers when it went down the tubes and almost took every one of us with us, including myself. And Lehman Brothers started it all. He was on the board.

KASICH: I wasn't
on the board of Lehman Brothers. I was a banker, and I was proud of it. And I traveled the country and learned how people make jobs. We ought to have politicians who not only have government experience, but know how the CEOs and the job creators work.

John Kasich:
FactCheck: Managing Director at Lehman, but not Board member

Trump gave Kasich a Lehman Brothers role he didn't have. Trump went after Kasich's work at Lehman Brothers, the firm whose 2008 bankruptcy almost tipped the world economy over the edge. Trump said Kasich was on the board, and Kasich correctly countered
that he never was [saying that he was a "banker"]. He was a managing director in the investment banking division until the company's collapse, however. In Ohio, Kasich's opponents tried to blame him for disastrously tying up some state pension money with
Lehman. Kasich said he made some introductions but they never led anywhere.

[OnTheIssues note: Politico.com scores this as an error by Donald Trump, but OnTheIssues would score this as an accurate statement by Trump: both "board member" and "managing
director in the investment banking division" are high-level influential positions of responsibility. Kasich's counter that he was simply a "banker" attempts to mislead the public that he was not in a high-level influential position].

Source: Politico.com FactCheck on GOP 2015 CNBC debate
Oct 28, 2015

Mike Huckabee:
Wall Street executives should have gone to jail in 2008

Q: You have railed against income inequality. You've said that some Wall Street executives should have gone to jail over the roles that they played during the financial crisis. Are there specific steps you would require from corporate America to try and
reduce the income inequality.

HUCKABEE: Look, corporations ought to exercise some responsibility. When CEO income has risen 90% above the average worker, when the bottom 90% of this country's economy has had stagnant wages for the past
40 years, somebody is taking it in the teeth. And it's not the folks on Wall Street. I'm not anti-Wall Street, but I don't believe the government ought to wear a team jersey, pick winners and losers.
The government ought to wear a striped shirt and just make sure the game is played fairly.

Rick Santorum:
Make America #1 in manufacturing, to being back jobs

We've lost two million jobs under this administration in manufacturing--15,000 manufacturers have left this country. Why? Because of bad tax policy, bad regulatory policy and, yes, bad trade policy.
We need to have a president that's going to pledge, as I have to make America the number-one manufacturer so working men and women can have good paying jobs again in America.

Ted Cruz:
Business flat tax of 16%; big business same as small

I rolled out my tax plan today. It is a simple flat tax where a family of four pays nothing on the first 36,000. After that, you pay 10 percent of the flat tax going up.
The billionaire and the working man. No hedge fund manager pays less than his secretary. On top of that, there is a business flat tax of 16 percent. That applies universally to giant corporations and to small businesses.